Aspects of Jewish Culture in the Middle Ages

THE ADVERSUS JUDAEOS TRADITION IN THE CHURCH FATHERS: THE EXEGESIS OF CHRISTIAN ANTI-JUDAISM

THE ADVERSUS /UDAEOS TRADITION IN THE CHURCH FATHERS: THE EXEGESIS OF CHRISTIAN ANTI-JUDAISlvI Rosemary Radford Ruether The primary materials for studying the attitudes towards the ]ews in the Church Fathers are the Adversus ludaeos writings.1 These writings are remarkable for their preservation of the 4rchaic "testimonies tradition." The earliest Christian scripture before the written New Testament was the ]ewish Bible, or "Old Testament," Christologically interpreted. Along wlth this Christological interpretation of the "Old Testament" there developed from the beginning an anti-]udaic "left hand." This anti-]udaic "left hand" of Christological interpretation was designed to show why the ]ewish religious community, from which Christianity got both its Scripture and its messianic hope (which it believed to be fulfilled in ]esus), did not accept this "fulfillment" of its own tradition. In effect the Church sought to discredit the rival rabbinic exegesis of this same Scripture and to build up a case against the ]ewish religious community 28 I Exegesis ofChristian Anti-]udaism and its teachers in order to confirm its own faith as the 2 . authentic culmination of the ]ewish religious tradition Both the Christological and anti-]udaic exegesis of the Old Testament preexisted and formed the herme neutical basis of the New Testament itself. But this tradition continues and expands in the Church Fathers as a collection of themes and proof-tests designed to prove that ]esus is the Christ predicted by the prophets , and that the ]ewish community, which rejects thi.s faith is both blind and reprobate. The Old Testament itself continues to be the basic Scripture for this hermeneutical work, although in the Patristic collections and treatises one or two New Testament references may be added to the Old Testament testimonies. (Even though in this paper 1will follow the Chtistian convention of refer 1 ", ring to the ]ewish Scriptures as the "Old Testament must note at the outset that this very term itself is a Christological and anti-]udaic midrash on the ]ewish ) . Scriptures udaeos writings include simple cata ‫ן‬ The Adversus logues of testimonies arranged by theme with a mini 01 mum of exposition, such as Cyprian's Three Books udaeos by the ‫ן‬ ews, the Contra ‫ן‬ Testimonies Against the sixth-century Spanish Father, Isidore of Seville, or the rom the Old Testament Against ‫ן‬ Selected Testimonies ews by Pseudo-Nyssa. T11ey also include treatises ‫ן‬ the on particular themes, such as Novatian's diatribe "On ewish Meats," or attempts to gather all the themes sys ] udaeos or ‫ן‬ tematically, such as Tertullian's Adversus ustin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho. The anti-]udaic ] , sermon or series of sermons was another favorite form the most. famous of which is the eight sermons against the ]ews preached by ]ohn Chrysostom in 386-87. The dialogue treatise gave rise to a whole series of imita tions, some of which may have actually been written as 29 I Rosemary Radford Ruether a result of arranged disputations between ]ews and Christians and s~me of which are literary conventions. Jn neither case, however, do we get much sense of what the ]ewish spokesmen might have said in their own defense. The ]ewish protagonist is a straw figure for the Christian apology. The dialogue form can even be elaborated into a liturgical drama.3 But throughout these writings from the second to the sixth century the arguments themselves remain fairly continuous and fixed. My purpose in this paper will be to provide a systematized summary of the main anti-]udaic themes which appear in these writings and are, therefore, generally accepted as a part of the content of Christian theology. One must remember that this represents the basic hermeneutical tradition of the Church. All theological writing and preaching were based on this Christological interpretation of the Old Testament, and so, although these themes are specifically summarized in this particular genre of writings, they are assumed as the background of and referred to in every teaching that touched on the ]ews. Since a cornerstone of Christian faith was that it fulfilled the messianic predictions of the prophets and that the Church was the New Israel replacing the Old, it was difficult to preach or teach anything without referring to this tradition in some way. The Adversus Judaeos tradition, then, informed the prevailing way that the Christian community was taught to look at not only the ]ews of the New Testament times, but also ]ewish history back to Abraham and the ]ewish community of...